Just like the movies

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"Life imitates art far more than art imitates life" is one of
many Oscar Wilde quotes that have become the amateur thinkers
stock in trade for decades, and not without reason. It is often
said that you can look at ideas in past science-fiction for
example, and see the modified reality today.

Now however, it is being suggested the technology behind movies,
rather than the ideas in them, could herald significant social
changes that will impact how individuals and businesses alike judge
the evidence of their eyes.

As a concept, counterfeit reality sounds like it sits nicely
alongside virtual reality and artificially intelligent robots - as
the harebrained dreams of friendless lab coat wearers - but it is
far from that. A theory being espoused by Daryl Plummer, a group
vice-president and chief Gartner fellow, is that Hollywood-inspired
innovation is leading the way to the "dark side of digital media
production", to a world of digital forgery and manipulation that
will produce fakes of various formats that are virtually impossible
to detect through casual inspection.

As an example, Plummer asserts that within a decade technology
will allow people to create a complete movie of something or
someone doing things they never did in places they have never been
to and that, significantly, it will look the same as genuine
footage. He says the increasing sophistication of technologies used
for such fakery will mean disputes over interpretations of social,
political, legal and business realities, which the judicial system
and other official institutions are not equipped to resolve.

"The idea is something I have been following for some years. I
have always been fascinated by special effects in movies and it
became clear in the late 80s that we were going to be able to
manipulate digital images much more easily," says Plummer. "On the
IT side, computer processing power was getting faster and cheaper
by leaps and bounds, Moores Law was driving it faster and
faster and the software was also coming to enable complex digital
animation and image manipulation ... soon I will be able to take
some footage of you in your office and use that to create a movie
of you in whatever situation I choose and even your family
wont be able to tell its not you."

You won't believe your eyes
The further development will, in all likelihood, mean everyone must
change the way they view everything that isnt happening under
their noses, whether that is as consumers or participants in
business or commercial transactions. There are clear signs of this
technology today, although they are currently prevalent in
entertainment only and therefore appear harmless. Imagination is
required to look forward and see that once the techniques enter the
business and legal sphere it takes on another challenging
dimension.

On the harmless side of things, the experience of moviegoers has
been revolutionised, they either dont know or dont care
that they are watching counterfeit images. Consumers view special
effects as part of the entertainment to be applauded rather than
feeling swindled that Russell Crowe isnt really tackling
tigers in a Roman coliseum.

In this context no movie more aptly highlights the evolution to
counterfeit reality than the 1959 epic, Ben Hur. The stories of
sheer expense and the enormous scale of a project that encompassed
six years preparation, 40 screenwriters and thousands of extras
have become part of folklore. It perfectly fits the misty-eyed
movie buffs refrain of they dont make em like
that anymore.

Of course they dont ... the behind-the-scenes stories of
dangerous stunts and injured actors are almost as famous as the
movies themselves; and making a film the same way today would be
financial suicide on insurance costs alone. That is why
artificially created worlds have come into movies with
breakthroughs like fractal imaging, digital skinning (the ability
to layer animated human skin onto a wire frame model) and human
motion capture.

As a result the epics are back in cinemas with a vengeance.
Large battle scenes like those in the Lord of The Rings trilogy,
Star Wars prequels, Troy and Gladiator are now possible once more
because lifelike animation of characters with high levels of
programmed behavioural artificial intelligence will perform death
defying stunts so humans dont have to.

But if Hollywood can sufficiently convince us Keanu Reeves is
fighting thousands of Hugo Weavings at once in The Matrix, then why
wouldnt people believe infinitely more subtle deceptions in
the corporate landscape?

Unreal life
There are already a number of animation packages available for
casual PC users, such as Animation Master, which enable people to
create surprisingly sophisticated animated films. Plummer says this
will only become more accurate and realistic over time so that by
simply re-generating a saved image of someone, the bedroom B.
Demille will also be able to employ digital skinning
techniques, lighting control and reflectivity to create more chaos
than a hacker could dream of.

He observes that businesses have been dealing with counterfeit
documents for centuries, even more so since the invention of the
photocopier. But digital technology, coupled with the Internet as a
distribution mechanism, explodes an irritant into a potential
crisis. He points to e-mail phishing as a present day example of
counterfeit reality, as it is making the unreal seem real, but he
says it is not the most striking example of its threat to an
enterprise; it is a concept which will combine the fears around
both security and identity theft.

"If you had invented a video of a CEO like Larry Ellison and he
is seen in a movie having lunch with Steve Ballmer, what would be
the impact on the market of that kind of thing?" asks Plummer.
"Then say it gets good enough that you can misrepresent a video
conference (VC) that occurred. The video of the VC is manipulated
and some of the things that were said during the conference are
changed, this could change the resulting actions and business
performance.

Even if it is later found out not to be real it will already
have had a deep impact. The sad reality is that even when things
are known not to be real they have a visceral impact on people; you
cant unsay something when it has been said, the mental
picture can be as damaging as the real thing."

Virtual scepticism
The Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC) was set up by the
Australian Federal Police (AFP) to counteract crimes proliferating
largely in an online environment. Kevin Zuccato, director of the
AHTCC, draws the distinction between detecting doctored photographs
and footage and the future potential of wholly created images and
scenes.

He says cooperation between the AFP and digital camera makers
means that codes in the products can be used by forensic teams to
identify whether footage was taken by the same camera, or on what
type of tape it was produced. The police are therefore confident of
quickly unmasking any high tech frauds from existing subject
matter. Their confidence is weaker, however, when it comes to
Plummers view of bogus creations.

"The creation of virtual images is something that it is very
difficult for law enforcement to be in a position to predict," says
Zuccato. "If and when it happens we will rely on established
partnerships we have created with businesses in the public and
private sector in tackling areas like phishing and get on the front
foot to try and mitigate those risks and problems as much as
possible."

The tactic likely to be adopted by Zuccatos team is one of
open-minded education rather than attempting to ensure fake videos
and documents cannot be made. Just as the bank customer must be on
guard and to some extent protect themselves when online, people
will have to learn to view all media with a healthy dose of
scepticism and decide when to be on guard and when it is OK to not
care if an image is an accurate portrayal of events.

Plummers concern is that the law itself will not be
prepared, and must be revamped to take into account superior
digital forgeries when weighing up the admissibility of electronic
documents in court. For example, the number one reason that
defendants currently beat child pornography charges is they claim
the images are not real and have been modified. The legal onus is
on the prosecution to prove the image is of a real life person and
this is often impossible; but if they cant, there is no
victim and no crime has been committed.

Ultimately, coping with counterfeit reality will occur in the
same way established generations have always handled societal
changes. Coping with any changes in normality is jarring and the
present generation of adults will always attach a certain level of
importance to flesh and blood reality. Just as our fairly recent
ancestors would be stunned and suspicious to see us sending instant
messages around the globe to people we have never met, we would be
uncomfortable to be suddenly confronted with end-of-this-century
reality.

Plummer makes a prediction that within 50 years the first child
will be born who grows up without distinguishing between real and
virtual. They will not care if the actor they are watching in a new
movie died before they were born, it will always have been that way
for them.

"Fake reality for sale will be the norm in the next decade and
its growth will not be about technology, but societys
propensity for allowing the deviant to become the norm," says
Plummer. "As people come to expect the use of virtual technology
instead of real-time human interaction, the psychological outrage
expected with counterfeit reality will be diminished ... I suspect
there will be some very notable situations where we are fooled and
a lot of noise will happen. The existing examples (see box, below)
are just the tip of the iceberg."

Counterfeit reality in the news Daily Mirror Iraq prisoner abuse
photos - Last May leading British tabloid newspaper The Daily
Mirror published photographs of British soldiers torturing an Iraqi
prisoner. The photographs caused uproar around the world, before
eventually being revealed as fakes. High profile editor, Piers
Morgan, was forced to resign, and the army division were left with
an apology that claimed the fake photos represented things that
were thought to be happening anyway - mud sticks.

The execution that never was - American Ben Vanderford created a
video with a friend depicting his own beheading by Iraqi militants
before releasing it to online file-sharing networks. A known
Islamic terrorist Web site contacted media outlets with the
footage, which was aired around the world as another US hostage
killing. After admitting the fraud he is being investigated by the
FBI, although it is unknown what charges he may face.

John Kerry protests against Vietnam with Jane Fonda - A
photograph of Democrat candidate John Kerry speaking alongside Jane
Fonda at an anti-Vietnam rally in 1970 appeared in the run up to
the recent US presidential election. Veterans called the image a
"slap in the face" and, despite being proved fake, the image sewed
the seeds in portraying Kerry as an anti-military service
candidate.